Presidential Candidates Stay Put to Prepare for Next Debate

Team Obama and team Romney spent Sunday preparing for next week's debates.

By Scott Krane

First Publish: 10/15/2012, 12:43 AM

U.S. President Barack Obama and GOP candidate Governor Mitt Romney skipped campaigning on Sunday to focus on preparing for their Tuesday night debate.

Barack Obama was gathering with advisers at a riverfront resort in Williamsburg, Va. while Romney stayed home in the Boston-area before the prime-time town-hall style debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.

The debate will take place just three weeks before the Nov. 6 election.

Meanwhile, the Mitt Romney campaign released a new television advertisement using footage from running mate Paul Ryan’s debate last week with Vice President Joe Biden. The advertisement displays clips of Ryan saying the government “can’t keep spending money we don’t have.”

Presidential advisers David Plouffe and David Axelrod, along with former White House officials Anita Dunn and Ron Klain, are running the Obama team preparations, along with deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes. Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), is playing the role of opponent Mitt Romney.

“With Romney is Ohio Senator Rob Portman, who is playing Obama in mock debates,” reported a newswire.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney leads Barack Obama in some national polls and drawing large crowds.

"Look to dusty Iowa cornfields, rain-soaked Virginia parks, the muddy fields of the Shelby County Fairgrounds, where a crowd of 9,500 — almost half of this western Ohio town — gathered among the barns and stables on a frigid October evening this week to glimpse the Republican presidential contender. . . . He drew an estimated 12,000 people to a central Florida rally last weekend, 1,200 to an Iowa town of just 1,000, and several hundred more to Newport News, Va., under heavy October rain," the newswire wrote, while Romney said, “People wonder why it is I’m so confident we’re going to win. I’m confident because I see you here on a day like this."